With widespread access to the Internet and improving infrastructure permitting greater amounts of data to be transferred, digital publishing formats and services are increasingly being adopted as part of everyday life. Digital publishing formats and services comprise newspapers, magazines, video sites, web sites, search engines, eBooks, blogs, social networks, mobile news and messaging networks or a combination of these services, sites, platforms, networks and mediums. With this vast array of data and services being accessible, it is generally desirable to improve user experience in terms of collecting and collating that data and/or aggregating those services.
For example, in many cases a user has accessed a webpage for a purpose, and is intent on achieving that purpose within a certain amount of time. Material on that webpage (for example a link to another article) may catch their attention as being of interest—but they may not have the time or inclination to access that material at that particular moment.
Stand alone applications, for example Evernote™, are known for the selection of text, images or links in a webpage by a user, and saving this material for the user's review at a later time. However, locally hosted applications or browser plugins have inherent disadvantages associated with their ongoing support and maintenance. This requires the user to take additional steps to enable this functionality—particularly installation. Further, the user will typically be required to update their software to ensure ongoing operation.
A particular example of content which would be desirable to store for later review is advertising. Digital advertising is increasingly being targeted to a user, for example using algorithms based on recent browsing activity, and demographic information obtained from other online activity by the user. Also, multiple advertisers may be bidding for the same spot on a web page. As such, the ads may change every time the same page is viewed on the same day by the same user.
It is envisaged that providing the ability to save and review advertisements may also be commercially useful for advertisers and advertising services in terms of improving the likelihood of engagement by the user. In particular, there is a greater prospect for a user to “click-through” to the advertiser when they have the opportunity to review the advertisement and consider any offer—thus providing exposure for the advertiser, and earning the advertising provider commission. United States Patent Application Publication No. 2009/0044147 describes a system for saving advertisements presented on a web page to an online location which may be accessed at a later time. However, the system presented greatly restricts the means by which the user may access those saved advertisements—requiring that they visit a separate webpage to do so.
Additionally, with the increasing adoption of internet based messaging and social networking services, users want to share their digital experiences with other parties. Many social networking services, such as Facebook™ and Google Plus™, provide widgets which enable users to post messages to their site with details regarding the web pages on which the widgets are hosted, or become associated with a particular entity, group, or event. However, as with the advertising system of US 2009/0044147, such widgets are limited in terms of options available to users—particularly regarding their ability to interact with other users or services while remaining at the original location.
All references, comprising any patents or patent applications cited in this specification are hereby incorporated by reference. No admission is made that any reference constitutes prior art. The discussion of the references states what their authors assert, and the applicants reserve the right to challenge the accuracy and pertinency of the cited documents. It will be clearly understood that, although a number of prior art publications are referred to herein, this reference does not constitute an admission that any of these documents form part of the common general knowledge in the art, in New Zealand or in any other country. Throughout this specification, the words “comprise” and “include”, or variations thereof such as “comprises” or “comprising”, or “includes” or “including”, will be understood to imply the inclusion of a stated element, integer or step, or group of elements integers or steps, but not the exclusion of any other element, integer or step, or group of elements, integers or steps. Further aspects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the ensuing description which is given by way of example only.